Her eyes open with laze. Opening them exposed her to vivid colors but it must have been twilight. The lights were dim but the flowers and trees and all the plant life was glowing. The exotic fluorescence clued her in that something was wrong. She shouldn’t have been here - she shouldn’t have been anyway. Her plane had crashed. But here she was. And she was alone. Now sitting up she could fully look around herself. There were no other bodies and no plane. No evidence that something went wrong besides her sitting in the middle of this garden.

She then pushed herself off the ground. She wasn’t even bruised from a crash. Her muscles only felt fatigue and not trauma from strain or brute force.

The flowers around her seemed to breathe with consciousness. They seemed more conscious then even she was. Is this death or life or what happened?

She would have to find out.

And there was a path in front of her.

“Don’t kill the vibe, Graham.”

She looked at me standing just a few feet away. As she had been getting closer and closer, I’d been steering the conversation further and further than how it was meant to go.

In my head the stars should have been realigning for us. Snow falling as we kissed. Straight out of a telenovela. But of course what was really happening was the harsh reality of how I couldn’t handle the vulnerability of that kind of intimacy- and without that, there could be no telenovela romance.

But her advice to stop breaking up our connection, it was just enough time for me to retreat back into my head. That pause was just long enough for her to take that extra step forward and now there was only one more step to take.

And so leaving behind my insecurities, I kissed her with everything I had.

Horizon. The pinks and oranges fed her at the moment. The sun setting marked solace.

Hope. She was filled and satisfied But even she did not know the significance.

Heart. The beating of heavy feet, the flap of ears, wind across the grass. Everything was alive.

Healing.

In her eyes I’ve always seen the depths of the universe. From the moment I met her, her eyes held me, but now looking into her eyes, her eyes were letting me go.

Did I go too far?

My affair was meant to keep us together. An unfortunate side-effect of being in the spotlight and being with her. Sacrifices must be taken to get salvation. I used to see my salvation in her eyes. The blue eyes I could fall in to.

Now I realize that I fell so far that she couldn’t follow, and so instead I drowned while she floated away. And with that I couldn’t even see her eyes anymore.

Little did I know that the next time I would see those eyes, it would all change again.

Ave was a survivor. They had survived the war and lived on the run for years now. Hell had come back to Ave in the form of the fatal or supposedly fatal match between them and their master, and now, well, Ave was lost. This scared them more than the face of death had.

On this tragic planet Ave was stuck without a means back off to safety and to civilization. For now Ave would have to think of how they could survive without anyone or anything besides dusty bones and old relics.

Ave pushed a relic around with their feet. Looked old for sure and quite jank. Ave continued going back and forth between their feet - the distraction took away the darkness from fear in their heart.

Back and forth it went until Ave could feel a flow from the object. A warmth. This relic would lead Ave out. In what way they didn’t know, but they could feel it. Light was beginning to return from the never ending twilight they were it. But it wasn’t the sky that lit. It was from below.

Below the crater came a ship - one good enough to fly away from the tragedy that occurred here. Hope swelled until it couldn’t drown anyone else.

Drown it did - not even Ave realized anything else - not the bending trees or the noise of dust settling that the dusty relics could speak. As relic had eyes and ears, it understood the chaos here.

So Ave made a run for it. Over the crater and past the enemy line. To the helicopter and off this tragic land.

When I was small About six old I started to rifle How I had no real home

I was lost Told I was leaving the city For a smaller town and a bigger house

I loved looking for a new house The whole process A new realtor friend The tours and fresh paint scent

But I was afraid of only one thing A question

What’s your hometown?

Technically I lived in the city But a year from now I will be growing up elsewhere So my hometown is not my birthwhere But just a somewhere

So do I have a hometown? Yes and no probably somewhere inbetween though